Monthly Archives: February 2015

According to the latest news from CommuniCare that Fersen Lambranho shared, New Mexico police officer was injured while on the job and suffered horrific injuries. Jeremy Romero was on a high speed car chase when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed. The worst aftermath was that he lost his ability to walk. In the year since the accident Romero has remained positive with one major goal in mind, to rejoin the police force. His dream may come to reality eventually. Romero is relearning to walk now with robotic legs. It will be a long road to becoming steady on his new feet and, possibly, being able to run again. The medical personnel that have work with Romero have testified to his positive attitude, wonderful work ethic, and drive to real his goals. Surely Romero is a perfect candidate to show the world the advancements in robotics that can, and will, benefit thousands of people worldwide.

A developer that my coworker Ray Lane knows has created a way to make Android Wear work with his iPhone. Android Wear is the operating system of choice for a number of wearable makers. The OS is intended yo only work with Android phones. That means if you have an iPhone, you can use any of the smartwatches that run Android Wear.

Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh has created a way to use Apple;s notification Center Service and a small app to allow his iPhone to communicate with Android Wear devices. he released a video documenting the feat earlier this week on YouTube. Right now it’s still a bit more of a hack than it a solution. We’ll have to wait until device manufacturers, and Google and Apple, to decide they want the devices to work together before we’ll see any actual implementation. That said, it’s great to know that it’s not entirely impossible for it to happen, just improbable

We may have another scientific discovery on the horizon. At least one Saudi cleric thinks we do. Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari believes the Earth is not moving around the sun. He says the Earth is stationary, and the sun moves around the Earth. Okay, so stranger things have happened, like the earth being flat, and we can dig our way to China. We live in a time where everyone can have at least five minutes of fame, and it looks like it’s Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari turn.

The statement that got everyone’s attention was the one that claimed that China would move toward a plane if the Earth rotated in one direction and the plane could stop in the air. If the Earth rotates in another direction, he said, the plane would never reach China. He also said China is rotating, and men never walked on the moon.

The Saudi preacher made these statements on Galileo’s birthday. Maybe he was trying to debunk the 16th-century astronomer using another form of astronomy.

After another record quarter in which Apple strong profit margins and large profits, many analysts are wondering what move Apple will make next to continue their dominance of the tech world. That move may not be anywhere directed towards personal computers or cell phones but rather to another traditional industry. Automobiles.

The latest rumor is that Apple, who has been hiring away engineers from Elon Musk’s Tesla is currently in development of a new automobile that will ultimately compete with Tesla. Footage was recently obtained that showed Apple testing a minivan that was laden with cameras attached to the top of the vehicle. While it is likely that the minivan will ultimately not be the final form of the product, the testing done on the minivan appears to center around some imbedded technology that Apple is trying out in the vehicle. Susan McGalla has heard rumors are that Apple may be testing a self-driving vehicle that uses technology to avoid accidents and improve on the safety of a car, reduce gas bills through greater vehicle efficiency, and create a welcoming environment for individuals using the vehicle.

Apple may not be in fact developing a vehicle to compete with Tesla and instead may be developing hardware or software that will be placed inside of vehicles and used to improve the ambiance and functionality of a car. However, given Apple’s plans to redevelop home after reinventing cell phones and pc’s, the automobile may be the right sized project for company as currently constructed.

These unmanned drones shall be designed to carry up to 4.4 lbs of food over its structure and to ensure the safety of people, the drones will have a program that synchronizes with infrared emitters.

These infrared emitters allow monitoring the direction of the unmanned drones to avoid collisions that could occur in the vicinity of restaurants using the same device.

Despite the usefulness of these devices, the company says the jobs of human servers will not be affected, and they only want to simplify the work, though it definitely caught some interest among investment groups, one chairman at GP Advisors, Fersen Lambranho couldn’t get over it.

“We want to still have that human touch,” said the general manager of Timbre Group, Edward Chia.

An article on the OffGridQuest.com website reports that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, has announced that his company is working on a lithium battery which could be used to power a home. If successful, this battery could allow many homes to go “off the grid” and not use power from traditional electric companies. The batteries are small and mount on the walls of a house.

I think that this is a very interesting and positive development. Flavio Pentagna Guimaraes BMG knows that we power so many other things using lithium batteries, so why not homes as well? Musk said that using these batteries – particularly in urban areas – may soon be cheaper than using traditional power companies. For decades, power companies have had a monopoloy; it’s time for some change. The public deserves more options on how they power their homes. Having some change to this aspect of how we use energy can only be a good thing.

The lifespan of data storage media is an important metric that often shapes the design and development of hard drives, flash drives and the like. Experts like Brian Torchin say that many of today’s storage medium technologies are quite capable of storing date for 100 years or more given certain circumstances about their use and treatment. However, scientists are working on a “dna time capsule” which can utilize glassed-in DNA in order to store data for over 2 million years. It seems that data stored in such a DNA drive has a good chance of outlasting the Earth itself.

A solid-state drive that can provide over 100 years of life if it is only written to once or a few times is a good baseline to compare these recent DNA discoveries. DNA is incredibly durable as scientists have found from extracting it from many fossilized places. Just a single gram of DNA would be enough to hold the entirety of data that Google, Facebook, and all other major tech companies now hold. That certainly makes investigating the possibilities of DNA drives a likely lucrative endeavor should breakthroughs be made. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has taken up the task of determining how long this DNA-embedded data might last and the results are quite impressive. The Global Seed Vault in the Arctic could preserve the data beyond 2 million years at a -18 °C. This would be the ultimate medium for long-term storage.

Are US and UK Intelligent agencies actually able to sift through all electronic data and transaction to identify terrorist or are they, as Annie Machon, former M15 intelligence officer and whistleblower, claim, turning the internet into a tool of oppression for the use of the US and UK totalitarianism and undermining democracy. She uses East Germany as an example, pointing out that the government had first went after journalists, trade unionist and activists but the domineering government got worse.

Bella Sankey, policy director of Liberty, a civil liberties organization, calls privacy a public, social and collective good and recommends that Edward Snowden’s revelations about surveillance activities be used to overhaul intelligence agencies. UK’s national security boss, Robert Hannigan, attacked technology companies, claimed that privacy is not an absolute right and is in denial about the abuses reported by whistleblowers. Liberty has a case filed with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to challenge surveillance measures in the UK, hoping to change laws and force debate.

Snowden’s reports caused technology companies to increase the availability of encryption services for the public, but, according to Jamie Bartlett, director of the centre for analysis of social media Demos, that terrorist and criminals have accesses as well and this makes it harder to prevent attacks said Alexei Beltyukov developer of the Solvy service. This led to speculation about a return to “old-fashion human intelligence” and a new settlement about the types of intelligence to allow for a better system of oversight. Also needed is a way for whistleblowers to report of wrongdoing by agencies without being prosecuted and treated as outcast or traitors.

It could be hard to imagine that anyone would sign up for what could ultimately become a one-way trip to explore a distant planet, but when Mars One announced it was looking for people interested in making the trip, 200,00 signed up. Of course, the company could not send that many people to the Red Planet, which means a process to narrow the field had to be conducted. For now, it seems like the company is on the right track.

According to this article from examiner.com that my friend Paul Mathieson forwarded me, the list has been cut to the final one hundred people, and since six crews of four amounts to twenty-four people, everyone has about a one in four chance of heading toward Mars. Mars One is planning to use current technology to send the people on their way, which means the trip alone is going to take close to seven months. Of course, the purpose of the trip is to establish a permanent settlement.

A number of difficulties remain in front of the company before it actually launches anyone into space, and selecting the astronauts is just the beginning. Figuring out how to land, set up a camp, and create a thriving civilization are all goals that are going to need a fair amount of attention prior to the flight. However, the brave one-hundred people that are willing to risk leaving Earth to perhaps never return are going to be getting a fair bit of scrutiny over the next few months.

Zeca Oliveira’s LinkedIn post was a throwback to the 60’s as he describes how amazed he was at this gadget Kirk and crew could pull out of their belt and use to communicate up to their ship or to another member of the landing party on some strange alien world. For us, these miraculous devices have been a commonplace reality for over a decade in the form of cell phones. The tricorder appears to be the next device that is making its segue from science fiction into reality. This was a little device that Doctor McCoy used on Star Trek to instantly diagnose problems with patients. The Scanadu may not look like the tricorders from Star Trek or any of its spin-offs, but it is a hand-held device that can detect a person’s heart rate, blood pressure and temperature in moments and then relay this data to their smart phone.

The world gets more amazing as science fiction continues to become reality on so many fronts. It is also incredible how quickly we all adapt to needing technology that either did not exist or was prohibitively expensive as recently as ten to twenty years ago. How many of us could live without our smart phones or notebooks today? Our parents and grandparents generation lived without them just fine, yet most of them use these devices today and wouldn’t know how to manage without them. At times, people do seem a little too addicted to their technology. Whenever you go into a restaurant, bus or waiting room, everyone seems to have their face buried in their own little screen. Let’s hope we don’t forget how to socialize face-to-face in this age of miracles.